As an appetizer for our discussion of Eric Lott’s essay, here’s a clip from Media Matters (via the Colbert Report) which encapsulates the volatility and instability of race and representation in popular culture. Enjoy.
Some good stuff today in class. Here’s a quick rehash:
Luis mentioned a book by John Berger titled Ways of Seeing, a ground-breaking work which discusses the ideological dimensions of seeing. I really can’t recommend it highly enough. You can find the BBC series on which this work is based online. Here for instance.
Jamil gave us an interesting analogy with respect to Bok van Blerk’s song “De la Rey,” suggesting it could be considered in the context of contemporary nostalgia in the USA for the “lost cause” of the Old South.
Jonathan paraphrased his reading response, focusing on the theme of ocularity in Waiting for the Barbarians. He tracked several characters’ relationship to seeing and knowing.
Consider that the sum of “Western” knowledge is founded on the principle of ocularity, that we claim to know that which we can see. Here is the basis for the Scientific Method (i.e., empiricism): knowledge must be subject to falsification, or in other words we can only truly know that which we observe. Proof– perhaps even truth– is an ocular matter. How do these ideas relate not only to Joll’s appearance but to his methods for establishing truth via torture? How do they fit with the Magistrate’s efforts to decode both the characters on the poplar slips and the Barbarian Woman herself?
On Wednesday we’ll discuss Empire as it is referred to in Coetzee’s novel. By way of an assignment, find passages which speak to this theme. For Friday, we’ll round out our discussion of WFB and talk about allegory and a short essay by Coetzee, “Into the Dark Chamber.”
In lieu of a mini-lecture on South African apartheid, here are my notes. Be advised these are very spare.
Roughly 75 percent of the population are Black. Bantu speakers are the largest language group. Others: Xhosa, Zulu, Sotho-Tswane. Less than 15 percent of pop. is white (Dutch and British descent). 3 percent Asian (primarily Indian). The remainder, 9 percent, are “colored”– ie. mixed.
Well we jumped right ahead into that form of racial masquerade known to many as blackface performance. We will have occasion to return to Othello next week, particularly in reference to another tragic hero of African descent, Brutus Jones. For the moment I just want to underscore the fact that our study of minstrelsy traffics in highly volatile cultural substances and of necessity confronts head on a compelling and painful past which is fraught with contradictions. What we’re going to plunge into, then, is the history– one history, a history– of what Paul Gilroy has called the Black Atlantic: a transnational space of cross-racial and cross-cultural affiliations and desires.
Try to imagine what TD Rice saw when he looked along the street of the 7th Ward in New York at a street artist (a busker) performing for pennies and plaudits. He must have seen something exciting: a gesture, a move, a phrase which seemed to him to be fresh and alive. Something with charisma and style. Those informal repertoires were to be lifted and reworked for popular consumption on the stage. A white boy “acting black” for other (working-class) white boys– b’hoys in the slang of the day– and their girlfriends. Contrary to the claims of those who would rather ignore blackface minstrelsy because of its often grotesque and abhorrent characteristics, “blacking up” was not a weird anomaly, a cultural dead end better left unvisited. Racial masquerade was and continues to be absolutely integral to the development of US American Popular Culture. Eric Lott’s essay in the reader will be useful in understanding this dynamic.
And look at this:
Slave Narrative from the Federal Writers Project
Baker’s “Darkey Plays“
from UVA’s collection:
http://utc.iath.virginia.edu/minstrel/mihp.html
Al Jolson in The Jazz Singer:
http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&VideoID=9430486
Contemporary images with a blackface dimension:
Here’s the assignment for Tuesday:
Read 2 of the 3 short articles in the back of Equiano’s Interesting Narrative:
1. Huggins, The Rupture and the Ordeal
2. Houston, Figuration etc.
3. Gates, The Trope of the Talking Book.
Remember that one question we’re going to address in terms of Providence, Free Election, and Works is as follows:
What is the relationship between trade and religion in the Interesting Narrative? How are the two domains, the economic and the spiritual, different or alike?
So the guys pulling 6 figures in CSU admin who don’t have much to do with actual teaching thought up this great idea that staff and faculty would take what amounts to a pay cut to keep the university from outright implosion. In addition, of course, students would have their “fees” (i.e. tuition) bumped. What this means is that undergraduates at CSU are paying more for less. Such a situation easily falls into the category of “gettin ganked.” If you find this sorts of hijinks irritating then… well… do something about it.
But the aforesaid is merely a bit of self-indulgent vitriol directed against an entrenched neoliberal administrative elite who– I’m not kidding– ultimately would like to privatize all higher education in the United States. What’s important for our immediate purposes is the issue of furloughs. Here are the dates that students of the courses I am teaching will pay to not attend:
HUM415:
Feb. 19, 22 (mandated. none of us had a choice in the matter.)
Mar. 26 (take Spring break a day early)
HUM 470 and AMS 179:
Mar. 25
Apr. 29
I’ll edit the course information pages to reflect these changes. Let me say as well that I am compelled to not work for CSU 9 days this semester. If I was a cold, calculating bastard I’d just take a 9 day vacation from teaching. But like virtually all other teachers I can’t in good conscience do that–a fact that CSU admin is depending upon. At the same time I can’t let CSU upper admin off the hook entirely: they thought up this abortive plan, and they need to feel some pressure. (On the assumption that students and their families will actually be aggravated enough to complain via phone, email, etc.). Oh, and according to a study at UC Berkeley “expanded furloughs will save the general fund only 12 cents for every dollar cut in wages and benefits.”
Hey we’re moving on Thursday. Given the lateness of this notice, let’s meet in our regular classroom in Clark Hall and then amble on over to our new location.
Just a quick word: it was really gratifying to me that people gave voice to their impressions and ideas in our brief discussion on (re-)indigenization and bhangra today. I think we should try to foster that sort of open dialog for the remainder of the semester. So don’t hold back. Even comments which may in some sense be wide of the mark have the potential for pushing our understanding forward.
On Wednesday I’ll give a compressed (15-20 min.) lecture on the Apartheid era in South Africa and we’ll delve further into Waiting for the Barbarians. As you continue to read Coetzee’s novel remember to keep your eyes peeled and your critical sensibilities alert: as a writer he’s playing a fairly deep game and while his prose seems simple enough on the surface it exhibits, as an old teacher of mine would say, “a high degree of condensation”.
